WEATHER: Tops 2C Lows -2C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY : Going inside the Kremlin and seeing snow fall in Red Square
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Not being able to find the Mataruska Doll Museum after 1 hour of walking
BUYS OF THE DAY: Lunch at GUM – again… It really is a beautiful building
Day 2 of Moscow and we had a BIG day planned. Kremlin, lunch, Gulag Museum, Matarushka Museum and if we had time a visit to some of the metro’s.
We had to catch the Metro form our hotel to Red Square. After getting onto the Metro 3 times yesterday, I think I have worked out the system – even if it is all in Russian. We decided to re-name all the stations into something that made more sense to us, so we had Haymarket Street, Webenko and Mentho to name a few. Whatever works right!
The metro in Moscow is amazing. It is the second busiest metro in the world after the Tokyo Metro. I guess when you have a population of 10 million and you are moving them around the city, you need something that works. You never have to wait more than a minute for the next train to come, and the mass of people is incredible. Well you have not had a train ride till you have ridden the metro in Moscow in RUSH hour. Our station was 5 stops from Red Square, so by the time it pulled in for us the train is packed. I’m talking really packed. Like 5 people get off and 30 need to get on! I am only exaggerating a little bit – but not much. With a little back pushing and a little side shoving, we all piled in, as the train waits for no-one. So we are in, and if you are claustrophobic, then the Moscow Metro will not be for you. You are either leaning on some-one, staring at some-one right in the face, and if your Bill, some guy had Bill’s armpit in his face for 3 stops as he held a rail above his head!! It was a little squashy, but that what the Russians do. Well next stop, 3 people get off and another 30 people get on – how the hell they made the room I have no idea – but a little more shoving and packing us a little tighter, the doors close again and away we go. We finally arrive at our stop, and you really need to fight your way off the train, otherwise you get caught on there and you miss your stop. We made it out the Metro, looked around and there was no Mel. We waited 5 minutes and out she pops from the station. She got caught up in the flow of people the stop before us and literally got pushed off the train in the departing people. That truly is how many people are getting on and off the metro at one time. As the trains are so frequent she just jumped on the next one and was able to meet up with us again so quickly!!
We were going to visit Lenin’s Mausoleum, but he is currently on holiday ( closed for renovations ) so we had some time to kill before we met our guide at the Kremlin. So we succumbed to the dark side for the first time in 3 weeks and we all had McDonalds for breakfast! And let me tell you it was delicious!!!! Sometimes the golden arches is just what the doctor ordered!
The Kremlin was our next stop. What can I tell you about The Kremlin? It was amazing. The history of this place is mind blowing. Our guide was very knowledgeable and as we walked around the gardens she pointed out things you know the stuff like ‘ those cannons were used in the fight against Napoleon’’ St Basil was built on the orders of Ivan the Terrible’ you know just boring stuff NOT! Besides the beautiful churches they have on the Kremlin grounds, they also have the world largest cannon and also the world’s largest bell that has never been rung. But I think the highlight has to be The Amory. This is where the they have pretty much everything kept from 450 ish years ago of history. This stuff is amazing. The hall of the clothes included dresses worn by Catherine the Great at her Coronation, Ivan the Terrible’s Helmut, all the Tsar’s cloaks and staf’s etc. These things are priceless and the gem stones that adorned these things were insane. There was also a hall of all the gifts given to the Royals over time, and they had them classified by countries. The Germans and the Swedish were very generous and the French a close third. Once again we are talking gold clocks, plates, gem stone books, challis and the list goes on. The last hall was the carriage hall and these carriages are straight out of a Walt Disney movie. Most of them were gifted to Catherine the Great over a period of 50 years from other countries and were stunning. There was one there that was the biggest, and she only rode in it once as it wasn’t very comfortable, so she never rode in it again! So after 3 hours of touring the Kremlin, we crossed back again to ‘plebsville’ and headed to GUM for lunch.
Our afternoon consisted of a visit to the Gulag Museum. People could be imprisoned in a Gulag camp for crimes such as petty theft, unexcused absences from work, and anti-government jokes. About half of the political prisoners were sent to Gulag prison camps without trial; official data suggest that there were more than 2.6 million imprisonment sentences in cases investigated by the secret police, 1921-1953. The Gulag was radically reduced in size following Stalin’s death in 1953.
It was a little depressing. More than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further 6 to 7 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR. According to a 1993 study of incomplete archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953 More complete data puts the death toll for this same time period at 1,258,537, with an estimated 1.6 million casualties from 1929 to 1953 These estimates exclude those who died shortly after their release but whose death resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps.
By the time we got out of the Gulag, we spent around 50 minutes trying to find the Maturuska Museum, but we didn’t have any luck, and after asking 2 people and the snow getting heavier we decided to pack in the day and just head for home. By the time we got back to the Metro it was 7pm. We literally had walked for 10 hours – less the hour we stopped for lunch. Needless to say our feet were killing us and our beds didn’t feel so good ever. Moscow is an awesome city, even with the snow.
No comments:
Post a Comment